They made a survey of over 2000 email lists and do you know what they found?

Most marketers actually send their messages during the same hours of the same day.

Right away, you can see that this means that when customers look at their inbox, your email is most likely squished between several other campaigns.

This is just one of the common patterns found in the report. Read on as we look at what the majority of email marketers (your competitors) are doing and see how you can use this to your advantage.

When do most emails go out?

Most marketing mail hit on weekdays, with Thursdays at 11-12noon (Eastern Time) being the busiest time for the entire week. Not surprisingly, there is considerably less email sent out on weekends.

Does it benefit your business for your emails to be lumped in with a lot of other email vying for your customers’ attention? If not, then reviewing your email sending schedules or at least testing different times may be worth a look.

How does your subject line compare?

The study looked at the length of the subject lines used for email marketing. Although the majority, 59%, kept theirs short and sweet… about 50-70 characters, quite a lot used subject lines up to 5 times longer.

Previous studies have shown peoples’ preference to shorter subject lines, although the length is not nearly as important as how catchy the subject itself is. Some marketers stand by their long subject lines, saying it actually results in more reads because the customer is compelled to click on the mail to read the whole subject line.

Do symbols make a difference?

Email recipients are said to be adverse to capital letters in the subject line. They are also said to respond well to questions – the question mark being an almost guaranteed curiosity teaser.

In this report, while majority of marketers did not capitalize on the upper case letters, it is remarkable that very few subject lines (5% out of all the emails sent) made use of questions and question marks.

How much do you have to say?

Most people scan thru email quickly and will not want to read big paragraphs of tightly packed words. A message that is easy to read or an image that is pleasant to look at – that comes with a forceful invitation to click to your site is what you want to put inside your email.

In this trackmaven study, most email run at more than 400 words, some even go beyond 10,000.

Will a review of your current marketing strategies reveal the same patterns? Is it time to revamp your email marketing schedules?

For more information, please contact us or check out our other articles on the topic in our blog.

*The trackmaven report did not specify the market segments covered by their study. The conversion rates for these emails were not covered in the report as well.